


Winter's Truth

by whatweletgo



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:56:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7034530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatweletgo/pseuds/whatweletgo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of how Sansa and Jon win back the North, and surprisingly, each other. </p>
<p>I'll die, she says to Theon, because she has been dying since she first left Winterfell all those years ago. There is simply not enough left. Except the wolf in her stumbles forward, forcing her into the freezing water. She is a Stark after all. She was born for Winter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Don't own, don't profit. I don't know what I'm doing. Loosely based off of the show and considering I haven't read the books (yet), a lot of this is probably going to sound ridiculous.

.

.

Her mind is metal grating on stone, a sword dragging from a weak wrist across the old stones of her home, following her every step. She can feel it tapping, slowly sliding across the bones of her ribcage until every breath is ragged, until she very nearly gives in.

And then.

_Like your half-brother, Jon Snow. Born the bastard of Winterfell, now the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch._

Something in the center of her chest tightens, boils and then runs over, bubbling down her spine into her fingers. It is hard for her to remember the name of it, but in the middle of the night as she shivers, the word settles. She doesn't dare say it aloud.

.

.

Her mouth moves against the pillow as Ramsay pulls at skin. It's a funny thing, growing up. From the moment she'd realized he was different, she'd never spared him another thought, another feeling. Now, he's the only thing she can think about. He has become the focal point of a scarred map that her fingers roam over minute after minute.

Ramsay's teeth bite into her shoulder. The blood will follow.

_Jon_ , she thinks. _Jon. Jon. Jon._

_._

_._

_I'll die_ , she says to Theon, because she has been dying since she first left Winterfell all those years ago. There is simply not enough left. Except the wolf in her stumbles forward, forcing her into the freezing water. She is a Stark after all. She was born for Winter.

.

.

When they're a night away from Castle Black and her eyes are on the stars, the worry slips up her leg to ache in her knees. She is far from home in a place full of strangers. It is King's Landing all over again. She is that same empty girl with hollow dreams.

It has never occurred to her until now that he might not want to see her. That he will wish she was someone who loved him, like Arya, or Bran or Rickon. He might not care what became of his half-sister. He might even think she deserved it.

.

.

In spite of the doubt that creaks in her joints and the fear tightening her shoulders, the moment the gate opens her eyes search for him. Time has faded his face into something akin to a Weirwood. It waits to pass judgment on her past indifference, though as her feet hit the ground she wants nothing more than to grip at its roots and fill her nails with its bark.

Her head turns in the cold. A feeling she hasn't felt in years winds around her ankles, shoots up to the pit of her stomach. It is hard for her to succumb to it right away. He comes toward her, taller, broader, hardly the boy she ignored and yet still so painfully Stark. He is everything of home and family and this hope that she slit into the marrow of her hip so no one could take it from her, even herself, bursts forth into his arms.

She thinks, breathing into his neck, that she will never love anybody as much as now.

.

.

He dies slowly, alone, in the cold.

_For the watch_ creeps between his teeth and wrenches around his tongue. When he was a boy, dreaming about walking the Wall and becoming a legend so the King would legitimize him, he'd thought he might die in battle. It would be brave, honorable. Maybe they would write a song.

He really did know nothing.

.

.

The choice is easy, lying at the feet of their swinging necks. They brought him back from the dead to lead them through the long night but his body is an aching memory carved out of the failure of Ned Stark's rules. The boy is dead and the broken thing currently staring into the dying eyes of another boy can barely call himself a man.

There is no coming back to the other side.

_My watch has ended_.

They can all hang.

.

.

Edd will never understand. The man has planted his blood into Castle Black and will draw his sword when the end comes over the Wall. There is a fatigue seeping inside out of some invisible pit, eating down his bones to sharp points.

His old family died so long ago. His new brothers killed him.

He will die alone, again, no matter if he does or does not fight and it is a relief he will never admit aloud. He couldn't care less about the White Walkers, or men.

And then.

The horn.

. 

.

He rests his hands on the rail, old habit of an old commander but she turns her head and he steps back like he's been touched by fire. The palms of his hands burn. His throat aches with cold. For a second he is sure she's a ghost. Sansa Stark would never seek him out at the edge of the North.

Something pushes him, knocking against his chest like the blade of a knife until his feet move down the stairs. It drags him closer to the flame of her tired face to prove its reality.

Longing ripples through him so strongly his legs stop within reach of her.

The fire cracks her face, quivering around her mouth as her arms fly open and he steps forward. She is alive. She is here. He is no longer alone.

.

.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short and sweet, we're still on 6x04 because I am super slow at writing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nope, still don't know what I'm doing. As evidenced by how long it took to update.

.

.

She notices, doesn't say, the shadow behind his eyes has grown, eating into darkness. It grins an empty mouth in an empty space, a promise of the distance that stretches between them.

Her frown is a neck on a block. Her voice a whisper of the downward sword.

_Where will you go?_

Given the choice, she would chain herself to his shadow and turn it bloody with her need, but she is infinitely thirteen, paying for the sins of her mother. It is the one thing, twisting cruelly around her stomach, she can't ask of him.

_Where will_ _**we** _ _go?_

The lack of hesitation in his answer is a crack of light within her chest, splintering into corners of her that have long since curled into blindness. It is an outstretched hand, looking so much like her father's, trailing across her wrist.

.

.

Her words are ice, scraping across his shoulder blades and slicing up across the skin of his throat. The flames of the fire jump with her voice, mocking him with the sound of Alliser Thorne's words as it crackles.

'You'll be fighting their battles forever.'

It repeats, and she speaks.

It repeats, and she talks.

It repeats, and she says,

and it repeats.

_I'm tired of fighting! It's all I've done since I left home._

She is asking him to fight, like Edd begged him to do, like Aemon and Jeor, Ygritte and Mance, Olly and Thorne. She is demanding he live but he is still suffocating in the darkness that the Red Woman dragged him out of. He feels it crawling over his shoulders, anchoring itself around his lungs, tightening its grip.

.

.

His anger slips up her neck as unforgiving fingers. She is looking at a battered heart tree with scars across its eyes and he is oblivious to her pleas. She has been fighting since she left home too, dying alone in gold and sunshine instead of snow and ice.

_I want you to help me, but I'll do it myself if I have to._

.

.

They falter. It feels less like what they want and more of what they don't. His reluctance is a sword between them. She tries not to twist it. He tries not to notice it.

.

.

The wolf is restless at the door.

“He's just nervous to let me out of his sight after….what happened.”

There is a conscious effort on his part to not say the words, killed, murdered, died. They are broken promises lodged in his abdomen that he breathes around.

“Ghost, stay. Keep watch.”

.

.

Her hands have forgotten the feel of warm fur on Stark skin. Ghost is nothing like her direwolf. Quiet, always on guard, watching her with eyes that are both full of longing and mistrust. He looks at her pained, as if he can smell the blood of his sister on her hands but she is the only thing left of his family he can protect.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers, swallowing a thousand memories of Lady and the reason she died alone in a place of summer.

The palms of her hands ache, soothing only when she lays them into his fur.

.

.

Sleep is dreamless for him these nights when it finds him, though it is usually slipping around the stairs and hiding behind the walls in defiance as he stares into darkness. He ends up by his window, eyes on her door, hand on Longclaw.

They are lone wolves in a castle of brothers he can no longer trust with his own life much less his sister's. Sansa is a blue flower taking root around his ankle, pointing in the direction of her home he can not fight for. His back is forever bending to the ground under shadow and flowers do not survive at The Wall.

He has to get them to safety, for as long as it lasts before the next long night, though he can barely move and she refuses to. He will walk with a limp to the edge of the world to protect her. It unsettles him, warms him, a strange thought he chews on until the morning.

.

.


End file.
